Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

“Oh… Well… I was hoping…”

“There’s your problem right there. HA-HA!”

“Hoping you might play…”

“Get it out, Oddjob.” I don’t know how he made that sound friendly, but he did.

“Something by the…”

It became clear to me that poker visor wasn’t just shy—he had something like a stutter. Billy didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“…by the Dock of the Bay?”

“No. By the B… by the Beatles. ‘Hey Jude.’”

“You believe this guy?” he asked me, jabbing a thumb at him and looking at me over his shades. “Man, I ain’t got that many na-na-nas in me tonight, cut me some slack.”

“Oh,” he said, starting to turn away.

“Don’t give up so easy, big boy. Just ask for something shorter. Something civilized . And feed the crocodile.” So saying, he used the toe of his cowboy boot to flip the latch and reopen the guitar case, scooting it around to gape at poker visor, who floated a rumpled dollar into it.

“‘Time in a Bottle’?”

“Fuck that. You’ll get ‘Bad Bad Leroy Brown’ and like it. And then we’ll go take a walk in the snow.”

“Walk in the snow,” he said, drooling a little.

“You comin’, little man?” he said to me.

“I like the snow,” I said, my stomach rumbling.

And then poker visor and me listened to Jim Croce’s song about how the big guy doesn’t always win.

Iwon’t bore you with the meeting in its entirety. Just the minutes, maybe, would you like that? Members present: thirteen, I won’t name them all. Ruth. Old Boy. Me and Cvetko, Billy Bang, Luna, Margaret, Baldy, not really bald, just starting to bald when his clock stopped, but that’s got nothing to do with it. His name was Balducci, ex-mob. You know how they say you’re never out of the mob? He was out of the mob. And always attached at the hip was Baldy’s dago friend Dominic. Dominic was younger, real handsome, a flashy dresser like me. But Brooklyn dumb.

I should tell you about Baldy and Dominic now. Baldy got turned by some hooker (See? Lots of hooker vampires out there, watch yourself!) while he was on business in Philadelphia like eight years ago, came back to New York as soon as he figured out enough to get by. But whoever she was, she didn’t stick around to show him anything. Maybe she didn’t know anything. Dom had been his driver. Dom didn’t know why his friend was so sick and pale, had figured he had gotten whacked and was surprised to see him at all, took him home, put him up in the attic. Dom wanted to tell their associates Baldy was okay, things had heated up a little with the Philly people over the disappearance, but Baldy said no, let him lie low for a while. “And stay with me, Dom. Till I feel better.” But he wasn’t going to feel better till he fed. Which he did, on Dominic, bled him out and backwashed by accident. Bang. New vampire. They knew better than to go to anybody; these dagos aren’t big on turning the other cheek but they do call themselves Catholic and know what a vampire is. They knew they were done aboveground. Then they remembered how sometimes the family moved guns and other stuff under the tracks, so they got the bright idea to move in down here. Only they weren’t the first vampires to think that. Not by a long shot.

Margaret was in charge then, calling herself the mayor. That she called herself the mayor was kind of a running joke because she had founded this colony, she had charmed the Hunchers into showing her where the best digs were, and she was damned if she was ever moving out of them just because she didn’t shake the right hands. She was our chieftess. She was our queen. Our capo. And if anybody understood how those things worked, it should have been a wise guy.

Baldy had never seen the inside of her huge, cush apartment, but he had heard how good it was. The mayor’s apartment. He wanted it. It wasn’t long before Baldy asked when there was going to be an election. He did it with Dominic standing near him, at a time when Old Boy was away.

Margaret jumped him, dragged him down to the tracks, put his head right by the third rail, and he couldn’t do a damned thing. She was stronger. Dominic didn’t know what to do; he saw in her eyes she was perfectly ready to fry them both, Dominic too if he touched either one of them, not that Ruth would have let him.

“Let’s have an election,” Margaret had shouted in his ear. “Right here, right now. I’m running for mayor of the underground, with full and unquestioned authority over every dead person in the tunnels. Will you vote for me, sir?”

He couldn’t get any traction. The only thing he could have braced against to try to push back was the rail itself. She was braced against the running rails, and she was just so much stronger.

“I said. Do. I. Have. Your vote?”

“Yes.”

He never openly bucked her again, but you could see he was waiting. That was Baldy and Dominic.

The rest I’ll get to later, too many names at once is a drag, like, how are you supposed to enjoy the party when everyone’s rushing up to you with a hand out and saying their name? And you’re so busy thinking about how you’re going to say your name you miss half of them, even the foxy chick you’ve already pictured belly-down in a back room getting her bra unsnapped by your fang. Or maybe that’s just me. Oh yeah, minutes.

Members’ apologies: Sandy. Sandy was only six months into night school, not that there’s really a school, that’s just a term for it. Being it. Sandy wasn’t coping well, prime candidate for sunbathing. We’re not even sure who got her, or why—turning somebody is pretty deliberate unless you’re new at it and fuck up; spit closes wounds, but if you spit in the vein and they die, shazam , which is probably how this went. I mean, who’d want to turn a nice mom-looking woman who worked in programming for WNET down in Newark? That’s the PBS station. I fucked with her once acting like the Count from Sesame Street . “How vell do you see in the dark? How many fingers am I holding up? Vun? Two? Yes! TWO Fingers! HAHAHAHAHA!” I was just trying to cheer her up, but she cried so hard she had a convulsion or something, or thought she was having one, which is what most vampire medical issues are—ghosts of problems we can’t actually have anymore. Anyway, Sandy got freaked-out seeing too many of us in one place, so Billy Bang would swing by later and tell her what happened, down where she slept in her cardboard box because she wasn’t ready enough to accept her situation to commit to a proper freezer, Dumpster, refrigerator, or coffin. She lived in the most remote part of our loops, under a staircase that led to a walled-up doorway, near Malachi. Malachi had a piano down here, used to teach it before; he kept to himself, but you heard him playing jazz sometimes. You won’t hear too much about Malachi, I really didn’t know him. Anyway, Sandy. The only reason she was still making it at all was because Billy would take her out and make her hunt, but she had to adopt a whole different persona to do that. Put on a shitload of lipstick and act like some 1940s movie star. Slowly closed her eyelids and opened them again like a lizard before she’d answer you. No, Sandy was a short-timer and we all knew it, even Billy. So no town meeting for her.

Right, minutes.

I forget the date and time, just that it was an hour after sunset and it was cold.

Item #1: There are weird little pale kids who may or may not be vampires charming people on the cars, probably hunting.

Discussion: Baldy pointed out that only I had seen them, but then Luna said she thought she had, too. Another vampire, a light-in-the-loafers, always-overdressed strawberry blond named Edgar, spoke up and said that he had definitely seen two such kids approach, charm, and accompany a woman to the platform and away. Edgar lived with a quiet little vampire named Anthony. Three sightings, all on subway cars of different lines, and that was enough for Margaret.